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Trans People

I am utterly pumped to share the pre-print for my article, “Messing with the Attractiveness Algorithm: a Response to Queering Code/Space.” This piece will be part of a 2018 special issue “Queering Code/Space,” edited by Daniel Cockayne and Lizzie Richardson for Gender, Place and Culture. I’ve only loading this piece to Socarxiv for open access. I was honored to be asked to be a part of this special issue, a follow-up to Dan and Lizzie’s “Queering Code/Space” session at the 2016 AAG in San Francisco. The pieces in the rest of the issue by the editors, Olu Jenzen, Sam Miles, and Carl Bonner-Thompson are great contributions to thinking about the imbrication of queer lives and spaces and the production of code/space. Along with my response to those pieces, I incorporated a failure I have seen in code for over a decade now. Lacking actual access to the vast archives …

Tweets from Snorton 12/1/16 lecture: C. Riley Snorton interrogate the absent presence of PhillipDeVine from the public memory of the Humboldt killings and the nationalnarration of Brandon Teena, as a transgender martyr. See more here: https://www.umass.edu/wgss/event/c-riley-snorton-devines-cut.

Who made this happen? (Queen) Megan Springate is a kind, brilliant scholar who works on queer archaeology (that’s a thing! and it’s such a cool thing!) and she truly led the effort to bring this to life. There are dozens of authors involved. And what was my role? Besides serving as a peer reviewer for many, many essays, my own essay, “LGBTQ Spaces and Places,” is meant to be a really wide-ranging piece that allows those unfamiliar with LGBTQ geographies and pushing thinking beyond the notion that all “gay” people live and/or hang out in gay neighborhoods in cities, and just adoreeee bars. Amen. I account for the …

I am honored to share that insights from my research were heard around the world for two minutes on August 23rd, 2016, in the BBC World Services “Beyond Binary” documentary. If you care to listen me especially, I am a minute 10. You can hear me speak about my new research on trans use of Tumblr. For about two years, I’ve been collecting data on the use of the #ftm hashtag and, for a shorter time, #mtf hashtag on Tumblr. I came upon the world of trans Tumblr, as I call it, in 2010 when I was choosing my own new name. I found a tightly-knit network of trans people who are otherwise unanchored through their geographic diaspora. You can click here to read more about that research project.

I was interviewed earlier this year by Fortune Magazine regarding trans* issues in the workplace, and was quoted in their article yesterday, “What it’s like to be young, gender neutral and in the job market.” I had an incredible conversation with journalist Vivian Giang this spring and I am delighted, relieved, and inspired to see that she is writing about these issues for the business community. As always, I am deeply honored to be able to talk about trans* issues publicly.

To read more about transgender people’s experience of navigating bathrooms, see the following:

With more young people refusing to be put in the binary-gendered box, more companies may follow suit, especially if they want to reach young consumers. The expanded ideas about gender identities are not a passing fad, says Jen Jack Gieseking, who identifies as transgender, lesbian, queer and goes by the pronoun “s/he.”

“The shifts we see happening around gender and gender identities are the opposite of …

This session brings together compelling scholars within diverse intellectual traditions in educational research to discuss corresponding and sometimes competing definitions of justice. Each panelist will respond to a set of questions designed to reveal the salient points of convergence and difference between Indigenous studies, critical disabilities studies, critical race studies, immigration and border studies, and queer studies in education. A noted critical discussant will synthesize perspectives, offer ideas for future inquiry, and prompt further discussion between the panelists.

Today I am speaking at EuroPride in Oslo: “Where Does Queer Life Go after the Gayborhood?” If you happen to be in the land of the midnight sun, join in!

Here is the abstract and info:

Reflections from Queer Spaces in New York City, 1983-2013: Scholars, activists, and journalists have recently proclaimed the end of the radical and welcoming lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and queer (lgbtq) neighborhood or “gayborhood,” both in North America and Europe. The affordable and marginal qualities of these spaces that helped to bring together diverse socioeconomic groups of lgbtq people have been eroded by global processes of intensified gentrification and the objectification of lgbtq bodies and experiences. Where does queer life go after the end of radical gayborhoods? Drawing on interviews with 47 lesbians and queer women who came out between 1983 and 2008 and archival research from that period, I trace the processes of gentrification …

I am one of the 18 LGBT Studies scholars invited by the Secretary of the Interior to come to DC this week and give recommendations for policies in selecting future US LGBT monuments. I am honored, thrilled, and inspired. I never would have imagined when I was coming out in the early 1990s that such monuments would ever exist, let alone I would be part of this conversation.

Representing the gender, racial, class, generational, age, and geographic diversity of our history is the top priority of those scholars who will be coming together tomorrow to discuss this work. As the geographer of the group, I will pay special attention to making sure we speak not only to the urban or the coasts but the rural, suburban, and other parts of our countries. We may not associate certain

Queer Geographies: Beirut, Tijuana, Copenhagen, a collaborative work of artists, activists, and scholars, showcases the work of queer art installations in these three very different cities throughout the 2000s. The art and its very smart, beautiful catalog highlight the identical processes of neoliberal capitalism that touch each of these places and brings queer life into sync more and more from greater distances. Two chapters of mine appear as the bookends: the academic/personal introduction in “A Queer Geographer’s Life as an Introduction to Queer Theory, Space, and Time,” and the conclusion “What and Where Next? Some Thoughts on a Spatially Queered Recommended Reading List.” I remain delighted and grateful I was asked to reflect on this work and reflect on what queer theory, critical geographic theory, and work on the geographies of sexualities can bring to this radical, important, and exciting catalog. I am also thankful to the lead editor, …

I just published what is the first book review on lgbtq spaces in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. If you do not sit at home nightly pouring over the flagship journal of the Association of American Geographers, you may not have noticed that in it’s 102 year history, it has never published a book review on lgbtq people, place, or space, or even one on any matter of geographies of sexualities. There have certainly been some key articles on these topics in the journal though, such as Michael Brown and Larry Knopp’s fantastic “Queering the map: the productive tensions of colliding epistemologies” in 2008. Regardless, dozens of books on geographies of sexualities and lgbtq geographies continue to be published at an ever increasing rate, and we now have the first book review in the top journal in the field. I am honored to be a …

Once I was able to sort out that my own copyright as ascertained through the UMIDatabase system allowed me to self-share my own work–because, of course, we really never know these days with copyright–I am hereby sharing “Living in an (In)Visible World: Lesbians’ and Queer Women’s Spaces and Experiences of Justice and Oppression in New York City, 1983-2008” with you, dear world. LIVW is presently being drastically rewritten into two (or perhaps three) books, Queer New York and Beyond a Politics of Visibility. Queer New York examines the spatialities of lesbian-queer life as they change over time and presents the concept of constellations (see below). Beyond a Politics of Visibility will focus on what the political, social, sexual, and relationship practices of everyday urban lesbian-queer life in the contemporary period say about these women’s tactics of resilience, reworking, and resistance.

OQLS is a living archive that affords lgbtqtstsiq people a space to map and share their stories online through mobile devices, multimedia, & web and geospatial technologies. In other words, anyone can text, call, or type in her/his/zee’s own stories from anywhere in the world and it will geocode to one giant, queer map. Hashtag: #OQLS.

The Gender, Sexuality, & Space Bibliography has a genesis through my own personal and work history. When I was an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College in the late 1990s, I told a visiting professor that I had what was then a ‘wild’ idea to do geographic research on–gasp!–gender, sexuality, and space. Without saying a word, she led me up to her office and produced the edited volume Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (Bell & Valentine, 1995) and slid it into my hands in absolute, reverent silence with an eye-to-eye piercing gaze. I did not understand that the magic of this book yet. I had no idea what it would have meant to not have this book exist when I posed this idea. I am still studying the generational shifts on lgbtq identities, culture, and spaces as the positive, affirming, and non-pathologizing work on gender, sexuality, and space continues to grow. …